egillespie
commented
3 years ago Hi Philip, I can explain what's going on when you type a false id: there are two routes for get('/todos/:id' (one on line 19 and again on line 60). Express will use the first route handler it can find that matches the path, so the line 19 version that doesn't have the error handling is running instead of the one below it. If you remove the handler on line 19, you'll see the results you expect. 😁
Beyond that, your routes are looking really good and I have a couple of tips I can offer to help make the API a little more reliable. Can you try these out?
Add 404 error to PUT and DELETE routes
Would you mind adding a 404 response to the PUT and DELETE routes just like the one in the GET /todos/:id handler?
This will enforce a consistent API that won't allow any operation to perform (accidentally or otherwise) on a non-existent todo item.
Never decrease the todosNum value
Your approach using todosNum to generate a unique identifier for each new todo is pretty good and this is a common approach in SQL databases to generate IDs called sequences.
There's a catch to sequences though: they should only ever increase in value. If you decrease the value, there's a chance that you will use the same number twice and create a conflict of IDs, or worse, overwrite information. 😱
This will happen in your API now. If you add three todos they'll get the IDs of 0, 1, 2 and todosNum will be set to 3. If you delete todo 0, todosNum will be decreased to 2. Adding another todo will then overwrite the existing todo with ID of 2.
The good news is that the solution is easy: never decrease the value of todosNum and always increase it when it's used.
Can you make the touch-up to fix this issue in your API?
After you’ve made your changes and pushed them to GitHub and your hosted site, give it a once-over to make sure it looks right, then comment back here and I’ll take another look.
Thanks! 🎸
philipsquire
Create a todo list API
@egillespie Can you take a look at this? It's hosted here and meets the following criteria:
/todos/todosshould create a new todo itemGET,PUT, andDELETEto/todos/:id/todosand/todos/:idrespond with a 404 status code/todos/:iddoes not exist, a 404 status code should be returned.gitignorefile to keep unwanted files and folders from being tracked by gitGot most of the heavy lifting done, but had to implement a workaround. I don't understand why there is no error when I type in a false id.